Page 38 (2/2)

"Was it one of Chance's women?"

"Hell," he said, "how do I knoho Chance's women are? You think all I do is keep tabs on pimps?"

"Who was it?"

"Not one of anybody's woarette, started to help hied his mind and pushed it back into the pack "Not a woman," he said

"Not-"

"Not who?"

"Not Calderуn Octavio Calderуn, the roohter "Jesus, what a s to make sense No, not a woman, and not your boy Calderуn either This was a transsexual hooker off the Long Island City stroll Preoperative, from what Garfein said Means the tits are there, the silicone ienitals You hear enitals Jesus, what a world Of course ery there, with a ot to his feet, put a hand on onna run out there, take a look at what they got You want to tag along?"

Chapter 28

The body was still there, sprawled full-length on the king-size bed It had bled white, leaving the skin with the trans-lucence of old china Only the genitalia, hacked alnition, identified the victim as male The face was that of a woman So was the smooth and hairless skin, the slender but full-breasted body

"She'd fool you," Garfein said "See, she had the preliery The breast implants, the Adam's apple, the cheekbones And of course the hor That keeps down the beard and the body hair, makes the skin nice and feminine Look at the wound in the left breast there You can see the silicone sac See?"

Blood all over, and the smell of fresh death in the air Not the stale reek of a late-found corpse, not the stench of decohterhouse, the raw throat-catching smell of fresh blood I felt not so much nauseated as overpowered, oppressed by the warnized her," Garfein was saying "That way I knew right off she was a pross and that made the connection in ht as bloody as this?"

"Sanized her?"

"Oh, right away I did a hitch not that long ago with the Pussy Posse over in Long Island City They still got a stroll there, they've had street prostitution in that sa a lot oflofts for residential use, buying up the old brownstones and converting then the lease in the daytime and then they move in and they look at what's around them and they aren't happy, and the pressure coure on the bed "I must have arrested her, oh, say three times"

"You know her naot more than one Her street name was Cookie That was the name that came to me when I saw her Then I called in to the station house at Fiftieth and Vernon and had so herself Sara but back when she made her bar mitzvah the name they wrote doas Mark Blaustein"

"She had a bar mitzvah?"

"Who knows? I wasn't invited But she's a nice Jewish girl froirl who used to be a nice Jewish boy"

"Sara Blaustein?"

"Sara Bluestone a/k/a Sara Blue A/k/a Cookie Notice the hands and feet? They're on the large side for a girl That's one way you can tell a transsexual Of course it's not foolproof, you get girls with big hands and boys with small ones She'd fool you, wouldn't she?"

I nodded

"She would have had the rest of the surgery soon Probably already had herself scheduled for the operation Law says they have to live as a woman for a year before Medicaid'll pick up the tab Of course they all got Medicaid, they all got welfare They'll turn ten or twenty tricks a night, all quickie blow jobs in the johns' cars for ten or twenty bucks a pop, they'll bring in a couple of hundred dollars a night seven nights a week, all of it tax free, and they got Medicaid and welfare and the ones with kids get ADC and half the pimps are on SSI"

He and Durkin batted that ball around a little Meanwhile the technical people were busy around us, ot out of their way and stood together in the ot, don't you? We got us Jack the fucking Ripper"

"I know it," Garfein said

"You get anything with the other guests? She ? Cheaters? 'I didn't see nothin', I didn't hear nothin', I gotta go now' Even if she did soure it was a neay to have fun Assu their own fun to notice"

"First he checks into a decent irl Then he picks up a TV streetwalker and drags her to a cheater's ure the cock and balls caed "Maybe You know, half your street prostitutes are guys in drag Some sections it's more than half"

"The West Side docks it's a lot more than half"

"I've heard that," Garfein said "You talk to the johns, soives better head Of course there's nothing queer about theure a john," Durkin said

"Whether he knew or not, I don't think it put him off much He went and did his number all the same"